Typically a robot is equipped with a teach panel. The device is relatively large (with a touch screen, operator buttons, etc.) and connected with robot controller by cable.
European Patent EP 2 055 446 published on 6 May, 2009 discloses a portable robot control apparatus to control a movement of a robot or of a robot tool end. The portable robot control apparatus comprises an inertial device with at least one acceleration sensor and/or at least one rotation sensor, where said inertial device measures its relative movement and the apparatus sends out to a robot controller a signal representing the relative movement, so that the robot controller is enabled to control the robot in such a way that said relative movement is repeated by the robot or by the robot tool end in real-time.
“Design of 6-DOF Manipulator Intuitive Teaching System by Using Smart Phone Orientation—User Friendly and Intuitive Teaching Operation for 6-DOF Manipulator”, Sanghun Pyo, Syed Hassan, Yasir Jan and Jungwon Yoon, 4th International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation, 2013, describes a smart phone that can make user intention for industrial robot moving, and the information of orientation sensor is convert to robot's translation and orientation by assuming that smartphone orientation can be a conventional joy stick equipped a universal joint in base part. The method can move the robot's end effector by-directional as XY plane.
According to these conventional solutions, the orientation of the teach pedant/smart phone is mapped to the orientation of robot tool center point, however, realization of linear robot movement by teach pedant/smart phone is less intuitive Furthermore, the user normally changes the teaching settings by setting various parameters on the teach pedant/smart phone, which diverts the operator's attention from the robot that he is teaching and makes the teaching less convenient.